The transcendent in the mundane

One of the rarely discussed aspects of living in a time when people debate free speech, are those moments when people choose not to say things against an institution because they are members of it. Yes, one should be able to say things online about gender or mass migration or whatever without it landing you in trouble with your employer. But it’s a different matter to launch into a full-scale public attack on an employer about its corporate strategy or new logo or the latest office renovations. There are all kinds of things which require, not quite self-censorship, but observing basic conditions of belonging to an institution. Observing these things can be categorised as common sense, or basic prudence. 

Although there will be a few grey areas between the two situations, I think most can appreciate the difference. Most can distinguish between normal expectations when it comes to speaking in an inappropriate way which could cause unnecessary reputational damage to some corporate body, and speaking out over situations you consider to be important ethical issues in the culture at large. Most would not rush to defend someone who laid into his senior leadership team for changing the brand of teabags in the office kitchen, but they frequently would for someone who speaks out about other significant issues that transcend the merely organisational. 

The challenge facing religious organisations is that it is often very difficult to distinguish between these cases. A matter of internal discipline over, say, expectations around marriage, must also involve individuals’ consciences and the movements of their hearts — which is exactly the point at which society at large would think some kind of public proclamation is not only permitted, but morally admirable or even necessary, for the sake of all that is good in this world. 

Chris Coghlan MP decided publicly to condemn his Catholic parish priest for withdrawing his access to receive Holy Communion because he voted in favour of introducing assisted suicide to this country. It was striking how reportage about the incident — and indeed Coghlan’s furiously self-righteous response to it — mistook a matter of organisational procedure for some sort of trespass against goodness itself. 

Assisted suicide is consistently, and unquestionably, condemned by the Catholic Church. Those who aid or abet the assisted suicide of other persons’ are similarly considered to have committed grave sin themselves. “Grave” or “mortal” sins are those deeds which, in Catholic teaching, forfeit one’s ability to receive Holy Communion under the normal conditions — that is, in Church parlance, “worthily”. 

It is part and parcel of the Catholic approach to the sacraments that there are baseline conditions and expectations that come with them. If any Catholic has committed mortal sin, they are expected to abstain from receiving the sacrament unless they have confessed their deed and received absolution — and that sacrament of confession also has conditions attached, like admitting genuine wrongdoing, expressing genuine remorse, and making acts of penance as gestures of restitution. In much the same way that someone who is already married cannot marry again in a registry office without adhering to the necessary condition of getting divorced first, someone who has intentionally and deliberately broken one of the fundamental commandments of God cannot receive the Eucharist without having undergone reconciliation with the Church. Occasionally abstaining from receiving Holy Communion for this reason is just a standard feature of Catholic teaching. 

The reporting of Coghlan’s situation was particularly interesting because it showed how poorly these procedural points are understood in the culture at large. This is to be expected in a non-Catholic country, and it would be dishonest of me not to admit that much of this is currently poorly understood in the pews of Catholic churches as well. If we dig a little deeper it seems that there is more at stake than literacy with sacramental norms, however, and that there are presuppositions at work that conspire to have made this scenario something of a perfect theological storm.

Primarily, there is a contention that somehow, spiritual matters must always transcend the sort of day-to-day decision-making that normally attends corporate membership of any sort. There’s a reason liberal theologians are often quick to highlight the incommunicability of divine truths. If God is infinitely incomprehensible, who are we to be confident that moral rulemaking aligns comfortably with his will? This is why such theologians like to highlight that human lives are messy, and that much human decision making is frequently ethically confounding. This is also why differently inclined theologians are equally quick to point to the substance of divine revelation — i.e. passages from the Bible, and the ecclesial documents meant to authorise their authentic, revelatory interpretation.

That word “interpretation” is an important one. When the residue of a Christian culture is Protestant, religious convictions are still assumed to reflect some individual’s interpretation of the Bible, sola scriptura. The priest in question was described by the Observer as having “a reputation for his strict interpretation of scripture”. This is a rather odd way to describe a Catholic priest, for whom the norms of valid and invalid interpretation of the Bible are set by the Church and adhered to under formal vows. Of course there are some matters which are open to a measure of interpretation, but there are fewer than in the Christian denominations. The assumption this situation arose from a solitary priest reading the Bible seems completely wrongheaded. 

This is why Tim Farron got a much harder time than Jacob Rees-Mogg over their respective positions on homosexuality. For Farron it is about saying “I think the Bible considers this a sin”. For Rees-Mogg, it was about saying something the culture found (very slightly) more palatable: “The Church teaches…”. It was of course only the former of the two that lost his position on account of what he said, and this is partly because Farron’s comments laid the judgment on his individual interpretation of the Bible rather than adherence to a formally recognised elucidation of it. Any individual’s interpretation of a text is always open to different interpretations. 

Then there is the fact that many priests will tell you of people who wash-up in churches and are shocked and appalled to learn that full participation in that church’s rites are not a given, a human right. They retort that being a place of welcome means there can be no terms attached to full participation. This isn’t a principle that is applied to almost any other corporate body. I can’t insist my employer makes me feel welcome by permitting me not to do any work. I can’t let my kids off going to school and complain they’re not welcome when faced with consequences for their absence.  

This made it all the stranger that Coghlan’s being informed that his decision to vote in favour of assisted suicide was described by the Observer as a “threat”, by Coghlan as an attempt to “coerce” him, and by Kim Leadbeater as an attempt to apply “pressure” on a parliamentary vote. Again, this is just odd. Coghlan was, at every point in this situation, entirely free to do as he sees fit. It’s just that doing so would place him at variance with Church teaching, and there are established procedures at play for the very many believers who find ourselves at such variance at one point or another in life. Again, I can’t think of other corporate bodies where this basic principle doesn’t apply in some form. 

It might seem counter intuitive for me to suggest that secular humanist assumptions are actually making spiritual matters too transcendent, such that they are fundamentally separated from the decisions we make in worldly life. Then again many commentators on this situation consider the summit of spiritual meaning to be the human conscience. Following one’s conscience must always be good, they say, as long as everyone else’s conscience is respected. Although this isn’t without obvious issues insofar as two peoples’ consciences can and do conflict with each other, it isn’t actually too far from the Catholic position. 

It is Catholic teaching that the conscience must always be respected. But intrinsic to this position is the view that even an erroneous conscience must be respected. The conscience isn’t respected because it is infallible, the point is that our deepest ethical orientations are so fundamental to being a human person that it is wrong to force someone to go against them, even when that person is wrong. What should the believer do when he fears his conscience might be going wrong? He should seek guidance from what Joseph Ratzinger called the “ecclesial conscience” — the deepest ethical orientations of a community of human persons which stretches over centuries of time. In other words, Church tradition.

Maybe people need to think less about how distant spiritual or sacred realities appear to be from the realities of daily life

To find oneself at such variance, therefore, requires doing all the things which Coghlan appears not to have done. It doesn’t mean running to the press to vilify your clergyman, it means quietly seeking guidance and advice through the vast amount of resources available — both human and written — to explain and expound the Church’s position on these things, and enter into a process of discernment and self-reflection. Seen in this light, a situation of apparently irresolvable variance over some grave matter is of course very sad and difficult for all concerned — but the only reasonable outcome in this case would be withdrawing oneself from receiving Holy Communion until, God willing, some path to reconciliation presents itself. 

Maybe people need to think less about how distant spiritual or sacred realities appear to be from the realities of daily life. Indeed, the decisive battles of the early Church were not against people who didn’t believe God is beyond our reckoning — it was against those who refused to believe God could possibly have come as close as Christians professed. Spiritual humility often means accepting that the most unlikely of vehicles was deemed fit by God to reveal him to the world in all the likeness of sinful flesh — and maybe this includes even the sort of basic procedural norms that we accept in any other form of human community.